You don’t have to be an anti-natalist, much less some kind of nihilist, to defend the decision on the part of a majority of would-be mothers to abort fetuses showing signs of Down syndrome. But over at The Week, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry sheds tears over the “ghosts” of Down syndrome babies who never were:

I do not know a single family with a child with trisomy 21 who has not regarded them as a joy, much less regretted their existence. The expression “ray of sunshine” has become such a cliché, but here it is perfectly applicable. It’s always striking how joyous many people with trisomy 21, especially children, appear.

…

Regardless of how one feels about abortion policy, this is a treachery of unspeakable magnitude that shames our entire society. We go about in the world surrounded by the ghosts we have made, and we do not even have the good taste to be haunted.

If there is a God, we had better all pray that He is merciful.

Whew, powerful words.

Gobry acknowledges the generally observed intellectual disability that comes with DS, though he omits any mention of the increased risk of early dementia and even leukemia, among other ills. In fact here’s what the Alzheimer’s Association has to say about it:

Studies suggest that more than 75 percent of those with Down syndrome aged 65 and older have Alzheimer’s disease, nearly 6 times the percentage of people in this age group who do not have Down syndrome.

One is struck – or at least I am – by Gobry’s seeming embrace of individuals with DS due to their childlike qualities, to the detriment of a perspective taking into account the complete life cycle. And linking the discussion to abortion only strengthens the focus on DS’ early years.

Gobry observes that on average, a person with DS “will have the intelligence of a normal 8 or 9 year old child.” Ah, but of course those are great years for parents, it’s no small thing to point out, sandwiched as they are between the chaotic toddler and rebellious teen phases. I suspect there’s more than a bit of warm, glowing self-interest smuggled into Gobry’s argument.

DS last popped up in the news in mid-2014, when Richard Dawkins was being lambasted for suggesting would-be mothers of fetuses with DS “abort it and try again.” Blunt language to be sure, but as The American Interest’s Walter Mead (I think, there’s no byline) said at the time, most people would seem to agree. At least if we’re judging them by their actual behavior and not what they’d be brave enough to admit to in mixed company:

One of the main reasons why people abort them is the same reason why people support physician assisted suicide and other “mercy killings”—because, the argument goes, one ought to spare someone from living a low quality of life.

Writing in the Guardian, British philosopher John Gray (an atheist himself) takes a look at the ‘New Atheists’ and isn’t too impressed by what he sees.

His attack on the idea that leftists ‘must’ be on the left is well worth noting, and is a helpful reminder that ‘secular humanism’ is not only mush, but presumptuous mush:

[T]oday’s most influential atheists would no more endorse racist biology than they would be seen following the guidance of an astrologer. But they have not renounced the conviction that human values must be based in science; now it is liberal values which receive that accolade. There are disputes, sometimes bitter, over how to define and interpret those values, but their supremacy is hardly ever questioned. For 21st century atheist missionaries, being liberal and scientific in outlook are one and the same.

It’s a reassuringly simple equation. In fact there are no reliable connections – whether in logic or history – between atheism, science and liberal values.

Quite.

Atheism or agnosticism are simply the absence of belief in a deity. It has no automatic ‘political’ consequences. That absence can sometimes incline the unbeliever to support profound illiberal ideologies (as Gray points out), but it can also lead him or her to do the opposite. A lack of belief will, by definition, mean that unbelievers reject the purported rationale of policies rooted in religious faith, but not always their utility.

Gray:

There have been many modern atheisms, some of them more cogent and more intellectually liberating than the type that makes so much noise today. Campaigning atheism is a missionary enterprise, aiming to convert humankind to a particular version of unbelief; but not all atheists have been interested in propagating a new gospel, and some have been friendly to traditional faiths.

… Roughly speaking, an atheist is anyone who has no use for the concept of God – the idea of a divine mind, which has created humankind and embodies in a perfect form the values that human beings cherish and strive to realise. Many who are atheists in this sense (including myself) regard the evangelical atheism that has emerged over the past few decades with bemusement. Why make a fuss over an idea that has no sense for you? There are untold multitudes who have no interest in waging war on beliefs that mean nothing to them. Throughout history, many have been happy to live their lives without bothering about ultimate questions. This sort of atheism is one of the perennial responses to the experience of being human.

And one that I share: “Ultimate questions”? There are better things to think about.

On the other hand, it’s important to remember that, to borrow from that old Trotsky line, you may not have much interest in the beliefs of others, but those who follow those beliefs may have an interest in you. To that extent, arguing back against the very root of those beliefs can make a great deal of sense. Critical biblical scholarship served a very useful purpose in the 19th century, so would subjecting the Koran to the same treatment in the 21st.

Gray attributes much of the rise of the New Atheists to 9/11, or rather its implications:

For secular liberals of [Sam Harris’s] generation, the shock of the 11 September attacks went beyond the atrocious loss of life they entailed. The effect of the attacks was to place a question mark over the belief that their values were spreading – slowly, and at times fitfully, but in the long run irresistibly – throughout the world. As society became ever more reliant on science, they had assumed, religion would inexorably decline. No doubt the process would be bumpy, and pockets of irrationality would linger on the margins of modern life; but religion would dwindle away as a factor in human conflict. The road would be long and winding. But the grand march of secular reason would continue, with more and more societies joining the modern west in marginalising religion. Someday, religious belief would be no more important than personal hobbies or ethnic cuisines.

Today, it’s clear that no grand march is under way.

Indeed.

Gray:

Though not all human beings may attach great importance to them, every society contains practices that are recognisably religious. Why should religion be universal in this way? For atheist missionaries this is a decidedly awkward question. Invariably they claim to be followers of Darwin. Yet they never ask what evolutionary function this species-wide phenomenon serves. There is an irresolvable contradiction between viewing religion naturalistically – as a human adaptation to living in the world – and condemning it as a tissue of error and illusion. What if the upshot of scientific inquiry is that a need for illusion is built into in the human mind? If religions are natural for humans and give value to their lives, why spend your life trying to persuade others to give them up?

Again, indeed.

As a species, we appear to have a strong tendency towards religious belief for, doubtless, excellent reasons. When conventional religious belief fades, it is simply replaced by something else (there’s no better example of that than communism, essentially little more than a milleniallist cult, with a supernatural idea of history stepping in for more traditional gods). Raging against religious belief is as foolish (as I am not the first to observe) as raging against bipedalism. Secular sorts would do far better to focus their wrath on the more malign expressions of religious belief. All religions are not equal. An Anglican is not a Salafist.

As you’d expect, Gray also turns his question to the notion of morality without God:

The belief that the human species is a moral agent struggling to realise its inherent possibilities – the narrative of redemption that sustains secular humanists everywhere – is a hollowed-out version of a theistic myth. The idea that the human species is striving to achieve any purpose or goal – a universal state of freedom or justice, say – presupposes a pre-Darwinian, teleological way of thinking that has no place in science. Empirically speaking, there is no such collective human agent, only different human beings with conflicting goals and values. If you think of morality in scientific terms, as part of the behaviour of the human animal, you find that humans don’t live according to iterations of a single universal code. Instead, they have fashioned many ways of life. A plurality of moralities is as natural for the human animal as the variety of languages.

At this point, the dread spectre of relativism tends to be raised. Doesn’t talk of plural moralities mean there can be no truth in ethics? Well, anyone who wants their values secured by something beyond the capricious human world had better join an old-fashioned religion. If you set aside any view of humankind that is borrowed from monotheism, you have to deal with human beings as you find them, with their perpetually warring values.

This isn’t the relativism celebrated by postmodernists, which holds that human values are merely cultural constructions. Humans are like other animals in having a definite nature, which shapes their experiences whether they like it or not. No one benefits from being tortured or persecuted on account of their religion or sexuality. Being chronically poor is rarely, if ever, a positive experience. Being at risk of violent death is bad for human beings whatever their culture. Such truisms could be multiplied. Universal human values can be understood as something like moral facts, marking out goods and evils that are generically human. Using these universal values, it may be possible to define a minimum standard of civilised life that every society should meet; but this minimum won’t be the liberal values of the present time turned into universal principles.

Universal values don’t add up to a universal morality. Such values are very often conflicting, and different societies resolve these conflicts in divergent ways….

The conviction that tyranny and persecution are aberrations in human affairs is at the heart of the liberal philosophy that prevails today. But this conviction is supported by faith more than evidence. Throughout history there have been large numbers who have been happy to relinquish their freedom as long as those they hate – gay people, Jews, immigrants and other minorities, for example – are deprived of freedom as well. Many have been ready to support tyranny and oppression. Billions of human beings have been hostile to liberal values, and there is no reason for thinking matters will be any different in future.

For a guy who laments moral relativism, Rod Dreher doesn’t shy away from equating ISIS, though with the expected qualifier, to the folks in Silicon Valley. Upon reading a dialogue between two future forecaster types at Edge.org – who talk about “useless” people (from an economic, military, and intentionally hyperbolic POV, let’s be clear) and the possibility of the very rich cheating death – he’s come away convinced that “slavery” will soon be at hand:

This is the religion of the future. Slavery will come to us disguised as the light of liberty and progress. These are the barbarians coming to rule us — and the masses will welcome them.

If you are not part of a church community that is consciously resisting this vision, then your children, or at best your children’s children, will be lost to the faith. There is no thought more corrupting to the human soul than the Serpent’s promise in Eden: “Ye Shall be as Gods.”

Goodness, er, gracious.

Dreher is disturbed by modernity, period, and for him Silicon Valley is symbolic of everything wrong with the (relatively) rationalist, reductionist tendency in the human affairs of the Global North. He blames the “barbarians” of Silicon Valley for being both elitist – e.g. with their talk of a technological “singularity” and interest in life extension – and down-to-earth in the worst way, by promoting “bread and circuses.” Think Netflix and Snapchat (or to get really granular, the animated gif keyboard).

Some of what Dreher is criticizing is rightly considered problematic (to borrow a term from the left), such as long-term unemployment becoming the norm. And Dreher correctly points out that the trends being noticed in the conversation between Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman aren’t necessarily being promoted. But the solution to these and other ills aren’t being obstructed by techno-optimists as much as they are anti-state libertarians (to call out “our” side), or the political dysfunction seemingly difficult to dislodge given increasing ideological rigidity.

In any case, egghead utilitarians deliberating about how the masses will endure the end of work and ample food and entertainment is not at all on par with radical Islam. But that’s just my two cents. Or is that two bitcoins? Whatever.

The Islamic State is now directing its wrath at Twitter. Namely its co-founder, Jack Dorsey, but also his underlings. And if you thought the Twitter Mob was bad, check out what happens when Twitter itself is in the crosshairs for wrangling with the ultra-reactionary:

ISIS posted an online threat Sunday warning Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey that “your virtual war on the Internet will cause a real war on you.”

The threat was posted in Arabic under a headline, “Foundation for the conquest of Jerusalem for the Islamic State,” and “Twitter a target for the caliphate.”

“Jack, how will you protect your helpless employees when their necks are on the line and they become an official target for soldiers of the succession and their supporters among you?” the online post states. “What will be your response to their families and sons, and their plight in this failed war?”

Oddly, ISIS has nothing to say about the awful, terrible and no-good lack of diversity at Twitter. It’s merely upset that the company is constantly taking down its videos. How selfish! Clearly the fledgeling Islamic State is not in tune with 21st century moral posturing. (Only 8th century beheadings.)

Luckily for the civilized world, the hacktivist spirit that dwells within ISIS is also at work among its opponents. As CNN reports, someone going by the name of “The Jester” has been undermining online jihadis for nearly half a decade:

“I realized something needed to be done about online radicalization and ‘grooming’ of wannabe jihadis, and we didn’t have mechanisms to deal with it,” Jester said in an interview with CNNMoney. “I decided to start disrupting them.”

Jamila Bey is a mom, a business owner, a Pittsburgh native—and a board member of the group American Atheists. She also, apparently, identifies as conservative. After introducing herself to the crowd, Bey used her three-minute spot to invite audience members to drop by the American Atheist table in the exhibition hall and learn more.

Over in the Financial Times, there’s an interesting piece on Putin’s friends abroad, but this passage in particular caught my eye:

The current Egyptian government believes that the Obama administration’s failure to support former President Hosni Mubarak, during the Egyptian revolution of 2011, revealed the US to be both duplicitous and naive.

Hold that thought, now read this (from the Daily Telegraph) (my emphasis added):

Islamic State militants are planning a takeover of Libya as a “gateway” to wage war across the whole of southern Europe, letters written by the group’s supporters have revealed. The jihadists hope to flood the north African state with militiamen from Syria and Iraq, who will then sail across the Mediterranean posing as migrants on people trafficking vessels, according to plans seen by Quilliam, the British anti-extremist group. The fighters would then run amok in southern European cities and also try to attack maritime shipping.

The document is written by an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) propagandist who is believed to be an important online recruiter for the terror in Libya, where security has collapsed in the wake of the revolution that unseated Colonel Gaddafi in 2011 . . .

[British] security officials also share Isil’s view about the possibility of using people trafficking boats to smuggle fighters into Europe. Thanks to its vast, porous desert borders with Sub-Saharan Africa, Libya has long been a key operating hub for trafficking boats heading into Europe, but numbers have escalated dramatically since the collapse of the Gaddafi regime. Italy’s interior ministry estimates that at least 200,000 refugees and immigrants are poised to make the crossing from Libya to Sicily or the tiny island of Lampedusa, Italy’s southernmost territory. Last year more than 170,000 arrived in Italy by boat, including tens of thousands of Syrians fleeing the civil war in their home country. . . .

Nasser Kamel, Egypt’s ambassador to London, warned Britain brace itself for ‘boats full of terrorists’ unless action was taken in Libya. He spoke after 2,164 migrants were rescued at sea in a 24-hour period over the weekend in what has been described as an ‘exodus without precedent’.

“Those boat people who go for immigration purposes and try to cross the Mediterranean … in the next few weeks, if we do not act together, they will be boats full of terrorists also,” he said. . . .

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Isil’s leader, has since laid claim to Libya as part of his “Caliphate”. Whilst on the whole that remains more rhetoric than reality, support for the group in this war ravaged state is growing. In September, Abu Nabil, an Iraqi and key leader within Isil, travelled to the country to build support for the group. His men took control of much of Derna, a traditionally conservative city in the east of the country, that is now being run according to the extremist group’s strict Shariah law. Hundreds of Libyans who had travelled to fight alongside Isil in Syria have started to return to fight for the group on home turf, residents say. They have expanded the group’s influence into the east of the country, taking controlling of parts of Sirte, a former Gaddafi stronghold.

I think the analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a JV team puts on Lakers uniforms, that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant. I think there is a distinction between the capacity and reach of a bin Laden and a network that is actively planning major terrorist plots against the homeland versus jihadists who are engaged in various local power struggles and disputes, often sectarian.

And since then there has been the claim that ISIS is somehow “not Islamic.”

The term “out of his depth” comes to mind.

In this context, this lengthy, intriguing piece by Graeme Wood in The Atlantic on ISIS is very well worth your time. Its implications are terrifying.

Some extracts:

The Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), follows a distinctive variety of Islam whose beliefs about the path to the Day of Judgment matter to its strategy, and can help the West know its enemy and predict its behavior. Its rise to power is less like the triumph of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (a group whose leaders the Islamic State considers apostates) than like the realization of a dystopian alternate reality in which David Koresh or Jim Jones survived to wield absolute power over not just a few hundred people, but some 8 million.

The millennialist temptation takes many forms, is perennial and, at its worst, very, very dangerous, but it is not something that a president wrapped up in the soft certainties of the end of history can be expected to understand.

Wood:

The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.

Virtually every major decision and law promulgated by the Islamic State adheres to what it calls, in its press and pronouncements, and on its billboards, license plates, stationery, and coins, “the Prophetic methodology,” which means following the prophecy and example of Muhammad, in punctilious detail. Muslims can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do. But pretending that it isn’t actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combatted, has already led the United States to underestimate it and back foolish schemes to counter it….

Following takfiri doctrine, the Islamic State is committed to purifying the world by killing vast numbers of people. The lack of objective reporting from its territory makes the true extent of the slaughter unknowable, but social-media posts from the region suggest that individual executions happen more or less continually, and mass executions every few weeks. Muslim “apostates” are the most common victims. Exempted from automatic execution, it appears, are Christians who do not resist their new government. Baghdadi permits them to live, as long as they pay a special tax, known as the jizya, and acknowledge their subjugation. The Koranic authority for this practice is not in dispute . . .

Centuries have passed since the wars of religion ceased in Europe, and since men stopped dying in large numbers because of arcane theological disputes. Hence, perhaps, the incredulity and denial with which Westerners have greeted news of the theology and practices of the Islamic State.

The incredulity and denial are true enough, and, ironically, Wood’s history (at this point) in a sense reflects very similar thinking. Contrary to his assertion, wars of religion (even if largely unacknowledged as such) did very nicely for themselves in Europe during the last century. Both communism and Nazism were, in many respects, millennialist cults (think of that “thousand year” Reich), and, as such cults can do, they killed millions.

ISIS may well try the same.

As for ISIS attacks on southern Europe (and in the end it would not just be southern Europe), it’s important to remember that the writings of one propagandist do not necessarily translate into deeds, but . . .

As the atrocities in France and Denmark remind us, Europe’s intertwined immigration and Islamist crises are already bad enough. They may well be about to get much worse.

We are in perilous territory. Slaughter as political protest cannot be defended. Free speech as legal and moral pre-requisites in a free society must be defended. But there are also other obligations to be laid upon those who wish to live in peaceful, reasonably harmonious societies. Even after Paris, even after Denmark we must guard against the understandable temptation to be provocative in the publication of these cartoons if the sole objective is to establish that we can do so. With rights to free speech come responsibilities.

Ah yes.

“Responsibilities.”

After the uproar that followed the appearance of the original Mohammed cartoons, an article was published in Jyllands-Posten (the newspaper that first published those cartoons) included this phrase: “Ytringsfrihed er ytringsfrihed er ytringsfrihed. Der er intet men.”

The translation? “Free speech is free speech is free speech. There is no but.”

But there is.

As I noted the other day, Jyllands-Posten is singing a different tune these days, made all the bleaker by its bluntness. The newspaper declined to republish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons after the Paris murders saying this:

“We have lived with the fear of a terrorist attack for nine years, and yes, that is the explanation why we do not reprint the cartoons, whether it be our own or Charlie Hebdo’s,” Jyllands-Posten said. “We are also aware that we therefore bow to violence and intimidation.”

In writing about the (first) Copenhagen murder last night, I linked to a 2010 Philadelphia Inquirer story that revealed how a number of the meetings due to be addressed by Lars Vilks (the artist whose event was attacked) had been canceled.

If I had to guess, I suspect that those who, however sadly, canceled those events, are today feeling, however sadly, that they did the right thing. Violence works.

There will be many more cancellations, many more invitations that go unissued, many more articles that do not get written, and many more cartoons that do not get drawn.

The noose tightens a bit more.

In a piece published by The Spectator before Copenhagen, Douglas Murray writes about a rally held in London a week or so ago:

Yesterday in London a crowd of more than a thousand British Muslims (carefully divided between males and females) gathered outside Downing Street. The rally – organised by something calling itself ‘The Muslim Action Forum’ – was a protest against freedom of speech, specifically to cartoons of Mohammed in the French publication Charlie Hebdo. Among the banners carried by protestors were ones that read, ‘I am a servant of holy prophet Muhammad (pbuh)’, the sinister ‘We love prophet Muhammad (pbuh) more than our lives’, ‘Jesus and Moses were prophets of Islam’ and the even more presumptuous ‘Learn some manners’. Among those holding a banner reading ‘Charlie and the abuse factory’ was a little boy. Others bore banners with the fantastically awful words spoken by the Pope last month: ‘Insult my mum and I will punch you (Pope Francis).’ A large banner hung beneath the stage from which speakers addressed the crowd carried the barely concealed threat: ‘Be careful with Muhammad.’

Meanwhile a group of tribal leaders presented a petition to Number 10 Downing Street which they said had been signed by 100,000 UK Muslims criticising publications which ‘sow the seeds of hatred’…. Among the speakers was one Shaykh Tauqir Ishaw, a spokesman for the organisers who said:

‘Perpetual mistakes by extremists, either by cold-blooded killers or uncivilised expressionists, cannot be the way forward for a civilised society. The peace-loving majority of people must become vociferous in promoting global civility and responsible debate. At this time of heightened tension and emotion, it is crucial that both sides show restraint to prevent further incidents of this nature occurring.’

“Restraint.” “Responsibilities.” “But.”

Murray:

Of course much though these fanatics may like to pretend otherwise there are no ‘two sides’ of the same coin going on here. The ‘expressionists’ and the ‘terrorists’ are not ‘as bad as each other’. The only two things which are in fact conjoined are the people who use guns and bombs to terrorise people for exercising their rights as free Europeans and the very large number of people from the ‘moderate majority’ who back up such violence (even while, like yesterday’s speakers, claiming to deplore it) with warnings that non-Muslims should be ‘careful’ when addressing their religion.

Writing in the New York Times, David Brooks frets about what non-believers, um, believe:

Over the past few years, there has been a sharp rise in the number of people who are atheist, agnostic or without religious affiliation. A fifth of all adults and a third of the youngest adults fit into this category.

As secularism becomes more prominent and self-confident, its spokesmen have more insistently argued that secularism should not be seen as an absence — as a lack of faith — but rather as a positive moral creed.

Phil Zuckerman, a Pitzer College sociologist, makes this case as fluidly and pleasurably as anybody in his book, “Living the Secular Life.”

Oh good grief…

Secularism has “spokesmen”?

Now it’s true that most people do want to have faith in something. That’s why so many supposedly secular philosophies are anything but (step forward, Karl Marx).

But if there is anything that non-belief should not be it is a creed. In essence non-belief ‘says’ one of two things: Either that there is no God, or (in essence, I know it’s more complicated than this) that the existence of God is highly unlikely. That’s it. Move along, there’s (literally) nothing to see here. What’s on television tonight?

From what Brooks says, Zuckerman’s “creed” appears to be some variant of the usual soft-left secular humanist mush. That’s for those who like that sort of thing, but only for those who like that sort of thing. I’ll pass, thanks.

Brooks then worries about how hard it must be “to live secularism well”, claiming that secularists have to build their own moral philosophies (not really, accumulated traditions, societal and familial, often work out just fine – and they come with the plus of not needing too much thought), and that secularists have to build their own “communities” and “covenantal rituals”. They do? Why?

And then:

Secular individuals have to build their own Sabbaths. Religious people are commanded to drop worldly concerns. Secular people have to create their own set times for when to pull back and reflect on spiritual matters.

No they don’t “have” to. Quite a few secular individuals doubtless do feel a ‘God-shaped hole’, or some need for the transcendent, but, judging by my own experience, I suspect that there are plenty of others who do not.

The amount of time I need “to pull back and reflect on spiritual matters”: zero. It’s easy, Mr. Brooks.

If anything, what Brooks’s article shows is how difficult it is for some religious folk (particularly, I suspect, the more intellectual among them) to ‘get’ the fact that for some secularists at least, “spiritual matters” are not something they are too bothered about.

Towards the end of the piece Brooks argues:

It seems to me that if secularism is going to be a positive creed, it can’t just speak to the rational aspects of our nature. Secularism has to do for nonbelievers what religion does for believers — arouse the higher emotions, exalt the passions in pursuit of moral action.

In a way Brooks is right. If secularism (which he appears to use as a synonym for atheism/agnosticism rather than, anything more specifically political or philosophical) is to be a ‘creed’, it would have to appeal to the irrational as well as the rational. That’s how creeds work (take another bow, Karl Marx!) but, to repeat myself, there is no reason why secularism in the sense that Brooks uses it has to be a creed. It can be a simple matter of observation (or, some might say, failure to observe), complete in itself.

Brooks:

The only secularism that can really arouse moral motivation and impel action is an enchanted secularism, one that puts emotional relations first and autonomy second. I suspect that over the next years secularism will change its face and become hotter and more consuming, less content with mere benevolence, and more responsive to the spiritual urge in each of us, the drive for purity, self-transcendence and sanctification.

“Enchanted secularism,” “the spiritual urge in each of us”?

I’ll leave that sort of thing to the likes of Professor Dawkins and, my spiritual urges thankfully non-existent, revert to spending my time on something more fruitful.

ROME — A new Vatican document expresses a negative view of elective plastic surgery for women, warning that procedures such as facelifts and tummy tucks can become a form of “aggression” that threatens female identity.

Surgical alterations in appearance, the document says, can “amputate the expressive possibilities of the human face, which are so connected to empathic abilities,” and “can be aggressive toward the feminine identity, showing a refusal of the body.”

The same document compares plastic surgery to “a burqa made of flesh”.